Maintenance of your WordPress website

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    Why should you always keep your website up to date?

    Even if a website with WordPress is created quickly and is basically secure, there are a few important points to consider. Due to the great popularity and spread of WordPress, they also often get into the target of hackers. Especially if WordPress and the installed plugins and themes are not updated, hackers have an easy game. 

    Security

     

    Probably the most important reason for regular maintenance of your website is security. By regularly updating all plugins, themes and WordPress itself, security holes are closed. This makes it more difficult for hackers to penetrate your website. And by regular backups you have an additional emergency solution.

    Troubleshooting

     

    With each update, existing bugs and compatibility issues are also solved. These can be, for example, problems with the display of your website.

    New functions

     

    WordPress is constantly improving and getting new features that make life easier for you and your users. It's the same with plugins and themes.

    Power

     

    Through updates, you can also benefit from improved performance. When your website loads faster, it also has a positive effect on your Google ranking.

    Packages for the maintenance of your WordPress website

    Hand over the maintenance and security of your website to a professional and take care of the essentials.

    Basic

    30 €* per month
    • Real time backups
    • Monthly updates
      &#8195&#8195 of WordPress and plugins
    • Securing the website
      &#8195&#8195 iThemes Pro license included
    • Translatepress Pro
      &#8195&#8195 all Pro Add-ons included
    • Troubleshooting for updates
      &#8195&#8195 max. 1 hour per month
    • Optional: Online store
      &#8195&#8195 plus 10 € per month

    Standard

    45 €* per month
    • Real time backups
    • Weekly updates
      &#8195&#8195 of WordPress and plugins
    • Securing the website
      &#8195&#8195 iThemes Pro license included
    • Translatepress Pro
      &#8195&#8195 all Pro Add-ons included
    • Troubleshooting for updates
      &#8195&#8195 max. 1 hour per month
    • Optional: Online store
      &#8195&#8195 plus 10 € per month

    Premium

    95 €* per month
    • Real time backups
    • Updates within 24 hours
      &#8195&#8195 for security-related updates
    • Weekly updates
      &#8195&#8195 of WordPress and plugins
    • Securing the website
      &#8195&#8195 iThemes Pro license included
    • Translatepress Pro
      &#8195&#8195 all Pro Add-ons included
    • Troubleshooting for updates
      &#8195&#8195 max. 2 hour per month
    • Optional: Online store
      &#8195&#8195 plus 10 € per month

    * Errors and omissions excepted. All offers are directed exclusively to companies, self-employed persons, freelancers as well as registered associations and public institutions acting in a commercial or self-employed capacity (§14 BGB). Our offers are expressly not directed to consumers, private individuals or others who do not act in a commercial or self-employed capacity (§13 BGB).

    Steps for a clean update

    When performing an update, complications can always arise with a WordPress website. A simple click on "Update now" or even the automatic update should be avoided for a professional website.

    To avoid a total loss of your website the following steps are necessary:

    • 1

      Create a backup of your website

      Before you start updating your WordPress website, you need to backup the current state. Make sure that you really create a complete backup, including all photos, files and the database.

      If something goes wrong with your update, you can restore the old status with a few clicks. The backup can also help you later when you edit your site or it gets hacked. Therefore, you should keep the backup for several months.

    • 2

      Create a staging site if needed

      A staging site is especially important if you have a site with a lot of visitors or even a short downtime could cause problems. 

      An exact copy of your site is created and you perform all the following steps on your copy. Here you can test if there are problems and can fix them before. After the update you simply import the copy and your update is finished. 

    • 3

      Disable caching

      To optimize the speed of WordPress websites, a caching plugin is often used. Here, parts of your website are copied and then loaded for a certain time only from memory. This means that these parts do not have to be recreated again and again. 

      For updates, however, exactly this behavior can lead to problems. Therefore you should disable caching plugins before updating.

    • 4

      Update theme and plugins

      Before you update WordPress itself, it is important to update all plugins and the theme. Here you make sure that with the new version of WordPress no errors appear. Especially with large updates of WordPress it can come to problems here. 

      If you do not follow this order, some plugins may not work after the update. 

    • 5

      Update WordPress

      Now everything is done to update WordPress itself. 

      In case of major updates, you will also be redirected to a page after the update where you will be informed about the changes.

    • 6

      Check website

      After the update is completed, you need to check your entire website. Click through your pages and look especially at pages that have a special function (contact form, forum, gallery and the like). 

      If everything works as usual and your site looks like it always has, you're pretty much done with your update. 

    • 7

      Complete update

      Now you just need to re-enable your caching plugin. If you have done the previous steps on a staging site, you need to restore this copy now.